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I remember feeling upset waking from a dream in 2013 in which I had found out Lewis Baltz had cancer. It was just a dream, no relation to fact as far as I knew and it had ended on a note of relief in that Baltz had turned up (in an airport, I think it was) and he was smiling and relaxed and well which made me very happy.

I was sent a link earlier today to a final interview, the intro revealing his death from cancer and emphesyma on November 22nd 2014. Dreams are good practice runs but the surge of grief was difficult even so. For a little while I could undestand why fans of silent-era film legend Rudolf Valentino supposedly took their own lives upon news of his death.

I would sometimes google to find a contact address for Baltz, despite not having anything to say to him but 'thank you' ...and... 'thank you' and, well, I didn't know what I'd have to say if I had found a contact email address for him, and maybe 'thank you' actually was enough. But, as…

I came across this pic earlier from a session in the summer of 2013 - oddly it seems like ten years ago rather than 18 months. To get the overhead point of view I had weighed down with bricks the ends of the legs of my fairly heavy tripod which was extended out several feet from the top of a cupboard over this mattress. I half expected it to topple onto me at some point - although the more likely cause of death would have been a stroke from all the standing up and then lying down again involved with operating the self-timer during the first couple of sessions, until I bought a remote release.

Last time I worked on printing up my small book of photos of a fence along one side a building site was summer 2013. (It wasn't a fence as such, as it got replaced over the years.) I got about 1300 pages done back then but I kept taking more pictures for some time after. The very last time was close to when construction work had just about finished so not much new was happening and it was on an afteronoon when some guy came running after me shouting that I was breaking the law for taking a picture of his house and he was going to phone the police. This Christmas-time I'll finish that book and I think I've found where I was last up to with my printing, September 2013. I found a note explaining everything, as if written for a stranger.